The difference between art and kitsch

To think of a song being “about” something is awfully restrictive. Not to mention dull. I prefer that a song simply is. Like a painting. If we focus on the writer’s message, we effectively close the text, as Barthes put it. We restrict the work to a single understanding. Great art exists in this interaction between the art and the spectator, the reader, the listener. Great art requires reflection, and it is in this reflection that the magic happens. Kitsch takes a simulacrum of this magic and projects it directly on to the work. Negating the need for reflection. Great art engages you, speaks to you, kitsch speaks at you. Often it shouts.